Government Regulatory Behavior: A Multidisciplinary Survey and Synthesis

Whereas much research has been devoted to the evaluation of regulatory policies, only in the past decade has attention turned to developing a theory of the regulatory process: why regulation comes about, and what factors determine its performance. As yet, the theory is still rudimentary, and large areas of positive political theory and organization theory have not been applied to the problem of understanding regulation. This paper summarizes the theory of regulation as it now stands and examines how additional ideas from more general theories in social science might be applied to regulation